We’re halfway via the Sean Combs trial for racketeering, conspiracy and intercourse trafficking. The prosecution might relaxation its case as early as subsequent week, at which level the protection will take over. However the group has already previewed one facet of its case. Because the protection lawyer Teny Geragos stated in her opening assertion, it’s not about what the prosecution is “attempting to make my consumer out to be.”

All anybody within the courtroom has to do is look on the defendant to know what she means.

The Sean Combs sitting on the defendant’s desk doesn’t look something just like the Sean Combs whose habits is on trial; the Sean Combs of most individuals’s recollections. His hair and goatee have gone virtually white, due to jail guidelines that forbid hair dye. He wears black framed studying glasses. And he’s all the time wearing a white collared shirt and a impartial toned crew-neck sweater: blue sweaters, grey sweaters, beige sweaters.

The distinction with the picture that Mr. Combs constructed as a mogul — the one memorialized on the duvet of Vogue, and in a fragrance billboard that includes Mr. Combs in white tie with the tagline “I’m King” — is so nice, it grew to become one of many trial’s earliest speaking factors. Though the trial itself will not be televised, it has been talked about by virtually each outlet masking the case.

Mr. Combs was “unrecognizable,” wrote the correspondent for The Unbiased. “Unrecognizable,” agreed Hot97. Not “like his Met Gala self,” decreed a TikTok commentator, referring to his final look at that get together, in 2023, when Mr. Combs wore a custom-designed camellia-festooned cape and bike tux with 600 Swarovski crystals and black pearls.

There’s a courtroom technique generally known as “the nerd protection,” a time period coined by the lawyer Harvey Slovis, who as soon as represented Mr. Combs throughout his trial on fees of gun possession in 1999. Now in broad use, “the nerd protection” refers back to the concept that dressing a consumer in glasses — equipment related to intelligence and an absence of bodily power — has a subliminal impact on a jury, predisposing them to imagine an absence of guilt. The purpose is, in a trial, each element of a defendant’s look issues.

Mr. Combs’s transformation takes it one step additional. Sometime, it might even be generally known as “the sweater protection.”

The Science of Courtroom Apparel

It’s a part of human nature to make snap judgments about different individuals, their identities and aspirations, based mostly on how they give the impression of being. In that sense, the courtroom is a petri dish.

“Jurors discover every thing,” stated Mark Geragos, a felony protection lawyer who has represented Winona Ryder, Chris Brown and, most just lately, Lyle and Erik Menendez, and who’s the managing accomplice of Geragos & Geragos. (He’s additionally the daddy of Mr. Combs’s lawyer, Ms. Geragos, and has beforehand labored with Mr. Combs, although he’s not concerned on this particular case.) That is very true in an extended trial.

Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, a jury guide who labored on the O.J. Simpson trial, agreed. “They’re in search of any clue obtainable to get a greater sense of who the defendant is,” she stated.

The Supreme Court docket acknowledged as a lot within the 1975 case Estelle v. Williams, wherein the justices dominated that defendants in custody (like Mr. Combs) could be allowed to put on civilian garments in court docket if requested, since seeing a person in jail garb might counsel guilt to jurors and prejudice their decision-making. Quite a few tutorial research have discovered that the extra enticing the defendant, the lighter his or her sentence. (This is named “The Halo Impact.”) And that glasses counsel intelligence to jurors — which results in extra acquittals.

Legal professionals for the protection can petition the marshal, or, in Mr. Combs’s case, the court docket, with their desired outfits. Usually, sneakers with laces are forbidden for security causes and, in some circumstances, belts, however in any other case it’s as much as counsel and consumer. Which suggests the alternatives they’re making are deliberate and thought of. Physique language and gown are proof unto themselves, and as with every witness, you need to management as a lot of the messaging as potential. No matter aspect of a case you might be on.

(That is as true for legal professionals and witnesses as it’s for shoppers.)

The end result might be “a really highly effective a part of the narrative,” stated Debra Katz, a civil rights and whistle-blower legal professional who represented Christine Blasey Ford.

The thought is to faucet “into the collective unconscious of the jury,” Mr. Geragos stated. To play on the stereotypes long-buried there.

A Temporary Historical past of Sweaters in Court docket

That’s the reason the default court docket apparel is usually a swimsuit or a jacket and tie. Harvey Weinstein, whose 2020 conviction for rape and sexual assault was reheard in a courtroom not removed from Mr. Combs’s, wore a swimsuit and tie for his protection. ASAP Rocky wore Saint Laurent fits throughout his firearms trial earlier this 12 months. Former Senator Robert Menendez wore a swimsuit and tie to court docket throughout his bribery trial final 12 months. R. Kelly wore a swimsuit and tie throughout his sexual abuse trials in each Brooklyn and Chicago.

Fits are historically the uniform of the institution: They converse to respectability, the belief of accountability and credibility — although to a sure extent, gown and its associations are all the time a guessing sport. If somebody is clearly not a swimsuit wearer in his day by day life, placing him in a swimsuit for the courtroom can learn as costume, and as inauthentic.

Which is the place sweaters are available in. Knitwear has its personal semiology — each in tradition and within the courtroom. It’s related to grandfathers, faculty uniforms and the countryside; with studying by a hearth — or being learn to. Sweaters are, actually, gentle, cuddly, swaddling. Mister Rogers wore sweaters. (Admittedly, they had been cardigans.)

The primary trial wherein sweaters actually captured public consideration was that of the Menendez brothers, in 1993 — which additionally occurred to be one of many first televised trials. Their lawyer, Leslie Abramson, dressed them in pastel knits, a selection broadly interpreted as an effort to make them appear youthful and extra harmless. The sweaters grew to become such part of the narrative of the case that they made an look throughout a spoof on “Saturday Evening Stay.” Within the latest Netflix sequence that revisited the trial, “Monsters, the Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” Lyle says to a buddy: “Purchase me a yellow sweater. Ever see a violent man sporting a yellow sweater?”

That trial “outlined the concept that type means lots,” Mr. Geragos stated.

Not too long ago, Luigi Mangione additionally appeared in a sweater — a burgundy crew neck — when he arrived in court docket to plead not responsible within the homicide of the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O. Brian Thompson. Alongside along with his khaki pants, this created the impact of “the boy subsequent door,” Ms. Dimitrius stated. (For anybody questioning who was paying consideration: The sweater, which gave the impression to be from Nordstrom, bought out afterward.)

P. Granddaddy

Nonetheless, Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not responsible, is without doubt one of the extra high-profile grownup defendants to not put on a swimsuit or blazer in court docket. As an alternative, in response to a request from his legal professionals, the choose accepted “5 button-down shirts, as much as 5 pairs of pants, as much as 5 sweaters, as much as 5 pairs of socks and as much as two pairs of sneakers with out laces to put on to court docket” within the court docket order regarding his garments.

As to why, his group didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark. The end result, stated Ms. Dimitrius, is to minimize Mr. Combs’s identification as a businessman — or the form of man who is likely to be accountable for a felony enterprise — and to make him look extra like a retiree. Definitely, it normalizes him, it underscores the concept that, as Ms. Geragos stated in her opening assertion, no matter his public profile, “standing on this courtroom, at 55 years previous, in the identical place he was born and raised, he’s going by the identical title he was born with, Sean Combs.”

In different phrases, that is the actual him. It’s particularly placing in distinction to a number of the photographic and video proof being proven to the jury, the graphic visuals of Mr. Combs’s extra excessive sexual tastes, the surveillance video of an assault and the pictures of Mr. Combs in his flashy heyday.

And the sweaters are more than likely not going away anytime quickly. Not simply because the precise protection is about to begin, or as a result of, although the temperatures outdoors are rising, the courtroom itself may be very air-conditioned. (At one level, the choose stated he was “freezing.”)

However as a result of, within the trial of a person who constructed his empire partly on understanding simply how a lot of a task gown performed in crafting identification, the place a stylist has been known as as a witness, and the place the defendant’s curiosity in controlling the picture of these round him has been raised a number of occasions on the stand, the sweaters provide their very own form of testimony.

Julia Jacobs contributed reporting.